Perennials Page 9

  By the time we get all twenty in the ground, they stand tall as our horses. To celebrate, Bitsy says we can have a pixie party. I bring leaves and flowers, and she makes a big circle around one of the trees. When we finish decorating, Bitsy stomps her foot and yells, “Summon the sprites!” I wave a branch, speaking “in tongues” to call the fairies.

  Bitsy plays the part of queen, so I fill one of the plastic pots with mud. Then I crush acorns as seasoning, and I sprinkle tiny crape myrtle petals on top of the pie. Bitsy says it’s pretty, so I let her have it.

  “Yum!” She pretends to take a bite. Then Bitsy pops open one of the buds. “This is Grandmother’s purse.” She presses it until the pale-pink petals peek out between the seams. “This is Grandmother’s handkerchief.” She pulls the petals, and we find their tiny yellow centers.

  I jump in to tell the best part. “And this is Grandmother’s gold!”

  Bitsy gives me a glare. “Stop stealing all the glory.”

  I follow my father through the barn, out toward the path where we counted his steps so many years ago. Now the knobby limbs of the crape myrtles form a seasonal overhang for the walking trail, just as Mother had in mind when she planned the design. Chief reads my thoughts. “Remember when we planted these?” I smile. He does too. “That’s the kind of stuff that made you, Lovey. Don’t ever lose hold, you hear?”

  When he talks this way, I feel a surge of nostalgia, and I wonder if life could be good for me here again. What if I dared return home to stay?

  I push aside the thought as Chief shows me the hillside where he’ll be installing Mother’s surprise garden. It’s a serene space, ideal for both shade- and sun-loving plants. He maps out the plan, explaining it may be “a little bigger than expected.”

  “I think it’s perfect.” I cup his forearm lightly. “You’re on to something with this garden, Chief. Every flower a memory. I can’t wait to see it all come together.”

  His satisfaction is palpable as we walk together past the pond. I was barely three, four at most, when he built this wooden pier and taught us how to bait a hook, always making sure we’d “leave some limp” so the worm would dangle in the current and attract the biggest bass.

  Now lean reeds line the bank. Like the Reed I loved, each stands hollow inside a hardened case, casting shadow on all that come close. Nearby, the faded canoe rests onshore, its peeling bow beneath water, the wooden paddles nowhere in sight.

  “Remember when you girls sank that canoe? Took Buzz and Juke and me, all three of us, to pull it up outta there. Liked to never got her freed.”

  Gentle laughter spools between us as I remember Chief’s two best friends. The three men could spend a full day in a fishing boat and still hang out for hours after they made it back to the farm. I wonder if I’ve been too petty all these years. Have I been making a big deal over nothing? So blinded by my own pain that I could no longer see the good right here at home? I take a long look at my father, a man who has shown us nothing less than love from the start. “We had a magical childhood, didn’t we? Bitsy and me.”

  The air spills heavy and long from Chief’s lungs, and I have a brief glimpse of how horrible life would be without him. I give him my full attention, noticing the receding hairline, gray and thin, the darkened age spots dotting his forehead, the slight tremor to his hands. He seems to respond in kind, trying to process a daughter who has returned nearly three years older since her last visit home, her own hair graying, her skin lined with wear.

  “I’ve made my fair share of mistakes along the way, Lovey. But I can tell you this. We tried to do everything right for you girls. I swear we did.”

  Half of me wants to hug my father and assure him I wouldn’t change a thing. But the wounded half wants to tell him how badly I needed him to stand up for me. How much his silence has hurt me. Instead, I loop back around to something safe.

  “So . . . tell me more about this memory garden.”

  He refuses to reveal another detail, savoring the surprise and opting instead to put me to work. We carry five-gallon buckets to the strawberry patch, where he says the plush red berries have had a successful spring harvest. Seizing the final drops of daylight, I wrestle the dark-green bunchings that droop from the eye-level arbor, a new method Mother has been tinkering with the last few years. Together, Chief and I pluck the last of the crimson berries from their stems. Even though I’m stuffed from our early supper, the temptation is too much. I pop the treats into my mouth, and Manning does the same, nibbling the ones I offer and returning affections tenfold, his black tail whacking the ground with a loving thud, thud, thud.

  The size of gumdrops, they release their warm, sweet juices on my tongue. “Taste of my childhood.” I savor the tangy-sweet berries, and Chief seems pleased. His strong jaw sets firm against the sunset and his steady frame is balanced tall beside the trellis. “Why can’t every man be like you?”

  “Ah . . . I’m no saint.”

  “I never expected to find a saint.” My voice softens. “But I’m starting to believe Mother got the last good man.”

  Around us, the fireflies take it up a notch, a display of dancing stars. “He’s out there, Lovey. And he’s missing out on a very special lady, I’ll tell you that.”

  Chief puts his arm around my shoulders and we make our way home, buckets in hand, the season’s-end strawberries rolling as we stroll. When the sun sinks, it’s all I can do not to let my head fall against my father’s shoulder and cry out all the hurt. But I never have cried on my father’s shoulder, and I doubt I ever will.

  EIGHT

  Waking up in my childhood bed brings another wave of nostalgia. “No one ever comes in here but you,” Mother said last night, defending her choice to let my room stay undisturbed for decades. Equestrian ribbons dot the bulletin board alongside photos of Fisher and me. A few graduation cards are tacked to the border while album covers coat the walls—a timeline of my life.

  I circle the room, touching the gritty album sleeves and processing every sting I endured in this space.

  Gene Loves Jezebel—the day Bitsy drove off without me and told the drama teacher she had no idea why I hadn’t shown up for auditions. Lie.

  The Cure—a Halloween party I couldn’t attend because Bitsy told Mother she had seen me smoking cigarettes. Lie.

  The Smiths—a deep dive into darkness after Bitsy and her mean-girl tribe ganged up on me in the commons area, telling everyone there was only one reason people called me “Lovey.” Lie.

  Despite the pain at the time, none of those scars compares to what Reed put me through. If only I could go back a few decades and have a talk with that young Eva. I’d sit her down and tell her straight: “Buck up, Lovey. Don’t let Bitsy push you down. She’s got no right to run you out of your life, your home. The good stuff is here. Now. And it can be yours.”

  But that’s the thing about life. There’s no going back.

  “Morning, sunshine.” Mother taps my open door to find me walking down memory lane. She kisses my head, as if I’m still a girl, blanketing me with the classic fragrance of her Chanel No. 5. “Hungry?”

  “I’ll cook.” I run my hands through my cropped hair as a half attempt to start the day. It’s only now that I notice the smell of bacon wafting from downstairs.

  “Already done.” Mother eyes the clock. Red digital numbers proclaim 7:53. “I haven’t known you to sleep this late in years.”

  “Me either. Sorry I wasn’t up to help with breakfast.”

  “Glad you got some rest. Chief’s gone to Coffee Club. He’ll be home soon for our trip.” She nods toward the window. “Bitsy’s already outside.”

  Great. That’s all I need, Bitsy accusing me of making Mother cook. No matter what I do, she always finds ammunition for another attack. I step toward the window. Her white Volvo SUV is in the drive, the liftgate open to reveal Trip’s soccer balls and Mary Evelyn’s dressage gear.

  “Why don’t you go say hello?” Mother points toward the hammock where my sister
’s bare feet flash rhythmically between two magnolias. The white blooms are as big as the soccer balls in Bitsy’s car. “Everything was bigger then,” Mother used to say, claiming magnolias were around when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

  From my window I roll the floral curtain between my hands and try to get a better view of my sister.

  “I always hoped you’d outgrow the whole sibling-rivalry thing. Whatever it is that keeps you at each other’s throats, I wish you’d both just let it go.”

  “In all honesty, Mother, an apology would do wonders, but Bitsy has never apologized for anything in her entire life.”

  She pauses, weighing her words. “People don’t always say they’re sorry, Lovey. You have to find a way to move on without it.”

  Mother begins to make my bed, and I hurry to help. “Kind of hard to let something go when it’s still happening.”

  She draws her lips into a tight frown, as if I’m the greatest disappointment of her life. “You think you’re the only one who has ever been hurt?” She snaps the pillow to fluff it in its case, clearly convinced her own pain far exceeds my own.

  “That’s not what I’m saying.” I place three pillow shams. She resets them. “Of course I’m not the only one who has ever been hurt. But it’s a little different when you’re betrayed by someone you love, and even worse when she does it on purpose. You don’t know how that feels.”

  “Well, maybe not. But I do know how it feels to lose my brother.”

  I don’t know what to say. I never knew my uncle Levi. He died before I was born. But Mother always took us to the memorial service during Advent season, and she still adds a plant to her garden each year on his birthday.

  She looks at me now from across the bed, her eyes steady and sad. “I’m telling you, Lovey, if something happened to Bitsy today, you’d never forgive yourself. This stuff would seem trivial. You both seem to think you have all the time in the world to figure this out. But time won’t wait on you. You have this moment, this day. If that.”

  I gather all my courage and head out near the magnolias where Bitsy is stretched in the hammock. Her eyes are closed. “Morning.”

  She doesn’t respond. Instead, she keeps right on pretending to be asleep, even though she’s giving herself away by tapping her foot: one, two, and three; one, two, and three. It’s the tempo we’d fall asleep to every night, sharing a bed because neither of us cared to sleep alone.

  I refuse to beg, so I leave her alone and head straight for Mother’s gardens. When I pass the shed, memories flood through, and I’m jolted back to the Sedona medicine wheel with Marian.

  May 14, 2016

  “There’s a reason the wheel is still used today. The ancestors have a lot to teach us.” Marian encourages me to examine the cycles I have already completed and the lessons that haven’t yet been learned. “What’s your earliest wound, Eva?”

  “Wound?”

  “Yes, the first time you can remember being deeply hurt.”

  “You mean, like stitches?” I think of a bike accident, a roller-skating injury. A fall from the diving board.

  “More of an emotional wound. Something that hurt your heart.”

  She probably expects me to reach back to age three, four. But instead I am taken to the garden shed, with Bitsy blaming me for the fire. “That’s an easy one. It’s a wall that’s held tight for decades.”

  “Maybe it’s time to tear it down,” Marian hints, suggesting I go back to that moment, become that eleven-year-old Eva again.

  For the first time in years, I shed my armor. It’s not an easy leap, so Marian continues to guide me as I tell her about Fisher looking up from the ground, roaring a fearful cry for help. Chief rushing in to smother the flames, rolling Finn against the grass until the shock wore off and the scared little eight-year-old started to scream. And later, when Mother called us together, demanding truth. That’s when Bitsy made the choice that set us both on a tumultuous trajectory. She didn’t stand up for me. She didn’t take my side. She chose, instead, to hurt me, and she smiled as she did it.

  “How do you feel when your mother believes Bitsy?”

  “Hurt,” I admit, barely a whisper. “She had no reason to doubt me.” I say louder, “None.”

  “And how do you feel about Bitsy when she betrays you?”

  “What kind of person likes to hurt other people? Especially someone who loves them?”

  “Does anyone defend you? Comfort you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Does anyone believe you?”

  I whisper, “No.”

  “What do you want to say to that little girl? The one who spilled the gasoline but who didn’t purposely start the fire?”

  I can barely talk, but I speak to the child within me, the naive, trusting little girl who believed my loved ones would never harm me. The hopeful, innocent Lovey, who looked up at her parents with full belief that they would stand with her in the world, protect her from the lies and the hate and the hurt. But they did no such thing. Bitsy attacked again and again and again throughout my childhood, and no one ever held her accountable for a thing. No one ever took my side. I speak to that little girl locked deep, and I tell her now, “Don’t worry, Lovey. I see you. I believe you.”

  Mother leans over the squash plants, turning on the drip line to give them a morning drink. Beside her, I pluck the yellow knobs while they are still small and tender for the pan. Adding them to the basket of carrots and beets I’ve already harvested, I praise Mother’s green thumb.

  “Started these in the greenhouse.” She runs her hands across the prickly leaves of the squash plant. “The black plastic warms the soil. Gave the transplants a boost when the temperatures dipped. Isn’t it nice to see them coming in already? Cucumbers and zucchini too.” She points accordingly. “My earliest start yet.”

  I lean over to admire the big yellow squash blooms, a lure that nearly got me in trouble as a child when I brought them to Mother as a bouquet. She never shamed me for it. Instead, she raved about how beautiful they were and helped me add greenery to anchor the centerpiece. How long has it been since I felt this peace? Sun on my face, wind against my skin, dirt on my hands, Mother’s soft voice finding its way to me between the garden rows. If only we could stop time. I’d stay right here in this moment forever.

  Under the canopy, Bitsy still pretends she’s asleep. We’re nearly half a century old and yet still children. “Chief called from the diner. Running a little behind schedule.”

  “He really enjoys that Coffee Club, doesn’t he?”

  “Ragtag group of early risers.” Mother smiles. “His kind of people.”

  My father’s tribe gathers at a family-owned diner where they’ve been served no-frills bacon and eggs since the fifties. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows the names not only of their fellow patrons but of the cooks and the waitstaff too. “Good enough is good enough.” That’s what Chief says about it. I’ve always thought that would make a marketable slogan for the diner, but they have no need to advertise. They’ve got a steady troop of loyal customers who keep coming back for more.

  “He needs to pay a friend a visit at the hospital before we head out.”

  I watch Mother for any signs of concern. “Should I be worried? Seems to be limping more on that bad knee.”

  “He’s good, Lovey.” She wears her polished grin, as if she’s trying too hard to convince me. “You should see our friends. I keep saying the Garden Club should set up a proper reception right there in the hospital lobby. Seems to be where we socialize these days.”

  I offer a sympathetic smile, so she softens her tone and speaks more sincerely as she kneels over the row of young cucumbers. “I won’t go out that way.”

  “I don’t want to think about any of that.”

  “Hear me, Lovey.” She sits straighter now, her knees against the earth, her gloved hands pressed flat across her thighs. “I want to lie down in that hammock and smell the flowers until I take my last breath. And then y’a
ll go find a pretty place right here on the farm. Scatter me in the pasture of wildflowers. Let the clover cover me and the honeysuckle swallow me whole. That’s what I want. You understand?”

  “Seriously, stop, Mother. You aren’t anywhere near that point. You’re still young!”

  She holds a stoic gaze. “Well, we can’t pretend I’ll live forever, can we?”

  “Sure we can.” I smile, but she doesn’t. Instead, she looks at me as if it’s the last time she’ll ever see me, and it makes my bones buzz. “Is there something you aren’t telling me?”

  She stays quiet and still, then looks off into the fields where the morning glows gold. “Betsy Hughes passed last night. Got the call this morning.”

  “Oh my goodness, that’s terrible. She’s only, what, late seventies?”

  “Seventy-six. Two years younger than me.” She shakes her head. “It’s gotten so I dread to answer the phone.”

  It’s hard to think of my parents aging. Someday holding Mother’s hand as she takes her last breath, or waking to the call that my father is no longer with us. My eyes water at the thought, and I push it away. Far away. I can’t imagine how hard it is for them to watch their friends fade, one by one.

  “Buzz Roberts had a heart attack. Your father’s age, you know? He’s over in the rehab unit now, flirting with those pretty therapists and driving Marge crazy.”

  “Ugh. He’s always been such a scoundrel.”

  “He has.” She laughs. “It’s not just us old folks, though. You remember Rebecca Tipton? Graduated with Bitsy?” I nod and pull more weeds. “Cancer’s back.”

  “Again?” I look at Bitsy, trying to imagine her tolerating chemo, hair loss.

  “Spread so fast with this relapse. She’s spent most of the last few years being sick from the treatments. I’m not sure it’s worth it.”

  I shake my head and move to a bed of carrots. “Hard call.”

  “The family has her with hospice now. Only a matter of time.” Then Mother looks toward the clouds and sighs. “But isn’t everything.”